Musical Growth

One of the new things I’m doing this year is every day I try to do at least one thing that gets me closer to one of my professional goals. Granted, every day that I write, I’m getting closer to one of my professional goals, that of a daily writing practice. However, what I am really looking at is something aside from the things that I already do on a somewhat ritualistic basis. Today I’m kind of crammed because it was the first day of classes, so I’m a bit behind the power curve when it comes to getting my regular things done, like this writing bit. I also have a rehearsal tonight in Addison, Illinois with one of the bands that is actually working. This rehearsal also includes auditioning a keyboard player, so I’ve got to set up my book to put the songs we’re working for the audition up front. This week I’m trying to get in an hour a day working on jazz standards with one of my guitars. This is the daily thing that is aimed forward.

I am tenuously forming a goal for a direction to pursue musically that provides me with both personal satisfaction and an element of regular challenge. I’m still trying to flesh out the concept but it’s related to jazz, so that’s why I’m working the hour a day on standards drill. I’ll continue with it until the concept crystallizes further and gains more clarity, at which point I’ll sharpen the focus in what I’m doing with the guitar during that time frame. I am drawn to improvisational music and using pieces for the jumping off point, but I’m interested in finding something that speaks to me as an individual more than the jazz standards do. I’m not certain at this point if it’s going to come to me writing material, or finding a niche of existing tunes that gives me a better sense of it all. It could be a combination thereof for that matter.

I’m also open to the possibility of using some classical pieces as jumping off points. There are many pieces that are theme and variation sets that essentially are the end result of the composer playing or working around the original concept in what could be thought of in terms of a documented improvisation session. Bach’s Art of Fugue runs through quite a few variations based upon an original concept, and while he used the fugue as the form, and the variations as an example of what could be done, it is quite a remarkable piece of music in its entirety. When it comes down to it, Bach was known during his lifetime primarily for his prowess on the organ and his improvisational abilities as well. Today we know him most for the massive amount of extremely high-caliber compositional work he left behind. It is interesting that there wasn’t much of a divide between performers and composers at his time.

Whichever the form, or even a mixture thereof, I have my glimmerings of where I want to head next in my musical pursuits. I don’t want to spend the next forty years of my time on the planet chasing my musical tail doing the same things I have in the past, as that wouldn’t be productive in a manner that supports forward movement. Additionally that’s too much like treading water for my tastes. I want to move toward something that I feel reflects more of my take on music, and gives me a clearer avenue to shaping what is being presented in live performance and on recordings as well. I’d also like it to be my project that I take the lead on as opposed to another sideman gig. This would be another welcome change as well since the bulk of my musical career thus far has been as a dedicated sideman in other folks’ projects.

It has taken quite a while for me to get this far, to the point where I have at least glimmerings of where I want to go from here. About ten years ago I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do. I was ready to take the leap, put myself on the line and take the chance. What I was shooting for didn’t happen, in fact the opportunity to leap passed by in a blink. It took the wind and everything else out of my sails, mostly because I had my sights so firmly locked on it that I hadn’t allowed myself to come up with alternative scenarios, as in if I don’t do this, then what else is the next best viable alternative. Here it is ten years later and I’m just now starting to get an idea of what next. I guess that’s just the way it works sometimes. So, I’m going to do that one thing today that gets me closer.

One of the things I really love about playing a musical instrument is how it feels, the actual tactile experience. I particularly enjoy the feeling of fat strings under my fingers, which is one of the major reasons why I’m drawn to nylon strings. I love the breadth of the two-inch fingerboard combined with the feel of high-tension nylon strings. They’re nice and round, comfortable to push down, and visually pleasing as well. I don’t like the feel of carbon fiber trebles; they’re thinner than standard classical strings and bite into the fingers differently. Bass strings are also lovely combined with the wider fingerboard of the five string the texture and string response feels oh so good.

Playing brings a welcome tactile experience. There’s something about running up and down the fingerboard, the mechanics of the fingers meeting the strings and the clean order of solid technique being put to use. I don’t enjoy playing sloppily because it feels wrong. I’ve been trained, and trained well. I spent time developing clean playing habits, and while they’ve changed over the years due to working in different genres and the requirements thereof, my hands know the difference. Good technique inevitably feels better than bad technique, and good sound comes from good technique.

The longer I go without playing, the worse my hands feel. I’ve reached the point and the age where my hands start to stiffen and feel uncomfortable when I haven’t been playing regularly. The joints start to ache, and my palms and forearms start to feel crampy. Stretching helps somewhat, but what really makes the difference is spending a couple hours or more running the fret board, moving strings, and sending sound into the air. Doing, in this case, is far better than resting. Inevitably after working through some time on the instrument, my hands feel better, and so does the rest of me, especially when I focus on how it feels to play.

Focusing on the tactile experience also brings about healthier playing practices. There should be a sense of flow and order to the process of making the strings sing. The only physical tension that should be present is the amount needed to push down the string, initiate and maintain a clean sound. I have a tendency to carry a lot of tension in my body, particularly in my back, shoulders and neck. I also have scoliosis, which gives a pain response to tension in these areas. When I focus on the tactile process, I attempt to not only focus on the feeling of the strings under my fingers, but also on my body’s sense of relaxation. I try to keep my back, neck and shoulders as relaxed as I can, playing with as light a touch as I can while still maintaining a sense of dynamic response within the music. Musical tension might be present, but physical tension should be dismissed.

Relaxation promotes musicality, flow, and good health. Tension creates dissonance, pain and fatigue. At some point we all experience this, and we will still reach a point where we’re tired even when we’ve been maintaining a relaxed state. I have found that when tension starts to come into play my abilities decline dramatically. What was easy before now becomes difficult. My hands start to throttle the guitar or bass neck, while my shoulders start climbing toward my ears. Before long my abilities to deal with faster passages declines and emotional communication becomes static. Mistakes start multiplying and frustration escalates. By the end of the session, whether it is a gig, rehearsal or practice, I’m achy and ready for some ibuprofen. If it was a gig usually the next day is pretty physically brutal between the back pain and fatigue, often combined with a tension-induced headache. Tension also radically increases the likelihood of a repetitive stress injury that can sideline a musician for weeks. Been there, done that, don’t need to go there again!

Being mindful when playing makes a huge difference in being able to maintain a state of physical relaxation. The tactile experience should be pleasing, and when tensions starts to ratchet up being aware of the tactile experience’s divergence from pleasure to stress should be a signal. Granted, sometimes we do experience discomfort that requires working through as anyone who has ever played a steel strung acoustic guitar knows. It is necessary to build calluses in order to be able to play the instrument, and it is also necessary to train the muscles. In this case your hands and forearms are athletes and as such need to work out, stretch, recover and do it all over again to build strength and endurance. Athletes themselves seek flow, tension and release, as well as awareness of the physical process and tactile experience. They draw from this to enhance their performance, as should musicians. I can feel it, how about you?

Sometimes you really need to take a break, and the more complete the break is, the better. A break can serve as a vacation from the daily grind, but can also serve as a time for reflection and upon occasion that reflection can possibly lead to an epiphany of sorts. I have found that on the occasions where I have taken a break from playing I often come to a realization about the direction I am heading in, particularly when I’ve had a pervading sense of dissatisfaction. I find that during these breaks I’m more likely to listen to music and find sources of inspiration that I hadn’t either permitted myself to think about or encounter. These are mostly small realizations that might spark a subtle shift in direction. Other times they might lead to a larger train of thought. Once in a long time there is that moment, the moment when the lights turn of and I become aware of something that really needs to change, something that simply can’t keep going the way it has been and I’m not certain how I’ve permitted the situation to get to where it is.

I have a full plate right now insofar as musical projects since I’m currently committed to four projects. In order to get a somewhat reasonable performance schedule, mostly motivated by making money I am working with three groups as a bass player and one as a guitarist. Two of these are blues rock and the other two are more classic rock and a variety of other things. None of these projects is really making me stretch as a musician. I get the chord charts together, do a minimal amount of woodshedding and hit the rehearsals, then the gigs, then do it over again. Occasionally there will be a gig that comes up that is something that I look forward to, once in a long while one that I’m excited about, but more often than not I’m not too excited about any of it.

What this tells me is that I need to find/create a project that does excite me and that provides a fairly frequent challenging aspect to it as well. This is usually what I can recognize. The real difficulty is identifying exactly what the project should be. I like performing in groups more than I like performing solo, but I’m beginning to think that I might need to take a better look at solo work. Over this break I heard an interesting live album by Ferenc Snetberger, a European guitarist who kind of falls between the cracks when it comes to classification. Snetberger was performing for a quite large audience on the recording, playing solo classical guitar. There was a series of eight pieces titled Budapest, and then a really nice arrangement of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” that was quite interesting. The recording was such that I wasn’t exactly certain if everything was written, or if he was improvising sections quite masterfully.

I think that I’m going to explore this type of approach and see what I can do with it. I am drawn to fingerstyle guitar anyway, have a background in classical music, albeit some time ago, and am also drawn to improvisational music. This would definitely provide a challenge, and could possibly include some ensemble work that could be quite interesting as well. I’m really a between the cracks kind of guy myself when it comes to my guitar playing at least, so in many ways, the more I think about it the more it makes sense to start moving in this direction. I don’t necessarily need to quit anything that I’m doing at this point in order to start moving forward with it, but I will need to budget my time very carefully, particularly now that I’m also committed to teaching a couple of English composition courses this Spring.

Still, I find the prospect of doing this to be somewhat stimulating, but once again I am not getting a burst of excitement in anticipation of starting to move in this direction so perhaps I need to consider my options some more. Then again, I don’t really get excited about much in life when it comes down to it. I don’t know if this is directly related to my depressive disorder, the medicinal treatment for it, or simply part of my personality, which would actually be a bit on the sad side of things. It does feel like a somewhat comfortable approach, which might indicate that it may be a bit difficult for me to really dig into and get going. Perhaps the ensemble approach should come first. At least I have an idea this time, so I’m one step further into the game.

I’ve always been interested in guitars, and later that interest grew to include basses, and then a variety of stringed instruments. When we lived in Delaware, in the late 90s and into the early 00s, I worked at a music store, Mid-Atlantic Music where my boss, Nick Bucci, did repair work and was also beginning to build his own instruments. Nick was, and still is, both an excellent guitarist and luthier. Even his earlier instruments were formidable. I used to love watching Nick work on instruments, whether he was repairing something or building something from scratch. Watching Nick, led to learning basic repairs, set up techniques and wiring tips from Nick. I had some issues with not rushing things, which led to a fair share of mistakes, but by the time we left Delaware I was more than competent at doing setups and various other small repairs. I also had the bug, and was starting to move toward building.

My first attempt at assembling an instrument was a FrankenStrat I put together in Delaware from a Warmoth body and a reissue Fender Strat neck that I purchased from Tommy Alderson, another of Nick’s employees and currently one of Steve Morse’s guitar techs. Nick painted the body for me and I did all of the assembly. It was a decent strat in the end which went up for sale before we moved to Tucson. From there I bought an A style mandolin kit from Stewart-MacDonald, along with some tools and scrapers. It was an expensive mistake, and ended up being unplayable, but that didn’t stop me from buying an F style mandolin kit when we hit Tucson. It was more difficult than the A style, but it is still playable some fourteen years later and is currently hanging on my studio wall in Oak Park. From there I was determined to start making some functional instruments.

I came into a small inheritance at the time which financed tooling up and purchasing building supplies. My father generously let me use a back room in his art studio in Tucson to set up shop and I started designing and building electric guitars and basses. Honestly I loved the whole process. Working with the wood to carve necks and create bodies was a tactile joy. I loved the feel of the wood giving in to take shape under my hands, and the smell of the sawdust. Quite frankly it was one of the happiest periods in my life, out there in that shop creating something out of nothing. It wasn’t easy, to say the least, but it was very gratifying despite the intense learning curve. My time with Nick had given me a basic understanding of what I needed to do, but I hadn’t done any actual woodworking since middle school shop so many years ago.

I had to learn how to use the router effectively, and I found that it was a difficult tool to master. There was quite a good deal of torque involved which was quite tiring physically for my forearms and hands. The neck shaping was also quite physical because the roughing out was done with rasps and draw knives. I used a radial sander for smoothing and shaping as well, both on the necks and bodies. There were many blisters from the draw knives and a sore spot where I braced the necks against my chest during the process that would ache for days. There were always piles of wood shavings and sawdust everywhere. How it didn’t get into my dad’s painting studio still amazes me. I did keep the door shut between his area and mine, and then while I was running the sanders, band saw or router I always kept the windows and outside door open to push the sawdust outside as much as possible.

I read books about building, watched Stew-mac instructional videos and bought a compendium of wiring diagrams to learn from. While I had watched Nick refret instruments, I had never done it myself so that was a massive learning experience in itself. After close to a year in the shop I started building instruments that actually worked, played well and sounded good. Ironically enough my successes were primarily bass guitars, one of which I still own and play upon occasion, although it is quite heavy. It was at about this time that my daughter was born and I found myself going over to the shop less and less. My mother was more than willing to look after Phoebe while I was in there, but money concerns were building as well so I went into teaching part time at Pima County Community College. Soon thereafter I closed the door on my shop, focusing on playing as much as could, teaching and raising my daughter.

I still have the equipment to build, and finished a bass last August using a neck I’d built in Tucson. Most of the time, though, my shop in Oak Park is gathering dust and cobwebs. One of the things I learned was that building is an expensive process even after you have the required tools. The raw materials, particularly good ones worthy of building with, are inherently expensive, as well as the hardware and electronics. I do miss the feeling of the wood taking shape in my hands and the smell of sawdust from the various woods used. I also will value the experience of pursuing something that was a passion for that year or so, even if it didn’t lead to a profitable business in the end. Who knows, perhaps I will return to it someday in the future.

After being gone for close to a week I find myself back in Oak Park, Illinois and back to the good old Midwestern gray skies once again. It was nice to see blue skies out in Tucson, Arizona, and to enjoy a short hike in the desert without burning up in the process. My family and I arrived home yesterday evening and picked up our dog, George, from Spike’s Boutique Hotel for Dogs shortly thereafter. This morning I had a rehearsal with one of the blues-rock bands I’m playing with, The Blu Wavs, and tomorrow night I have a gig with them in Palos Heights. I’m off this New Year’s Eve, which is a plus because I can spend it with my family as well as avoiding the inevitably impaired drivers that come with that particular holiday. On the negative side it’s usually one of the better payouts of the year, so I’m missing that. Saturday is New Year’s Eve, and my wife likes to set aside some time to review the passing year, making note of good things that happened, places visited and experiences accrued, as well as some time to consider the incoming year and set some benchmarks for it.

This past year has had some interesting turns, particularly toward the end, assisted somewhat by taking both the summer and fall semesters off from teaching college. This past summer I did teach three weeks at the Dominican Gifted and Talented Camp, one week of Creative Writing, one week of Star Wars Fan Fiction writing, and then one week of American Literature focusing on Ernest Hemingway. It was fun for the kids and for me as well and it was two more weeks than I taught the summer before. I had two weeks scheduled for the previous summer, but only one flew. This summer I was scheduled for two and picked up the third due to a scheduling conflict with the originally slotted instructor. I managed to acquire the third through a combination of networking, social media, and luck.

The summer was slow in terms of gigs because I was officially band-less. I did a couple of pickup gigs for local block parties, which were fun, and I also performed with a group that was assembled for an original music block that was also fun. Through these gigs I added contacts and now have some increasingly reliable folks with skills to draw from for similar situations. Starting in August I started increasing my musical commitments to what I have right now, four groups, two of which are actively performing and two of which are in the process of building up to it. This is a welcome shift in the tides as well, as I was not working nearly as much from a year ago in August to last June.

I’ve also landed a part-time gig teaching English Composition for this Spring Semester at Moraine Valley Community College. I have two classes stacked around mid-day on Tuesday and Thursday. The pay is much better than where I was teaching last year, and it only requires that I’m there two days a week versus the four I was at the old position. I’ll still need to plan preparation time, grading time and allow for a longer commute, but the result is I will still have a good amount of time for my writing and musical projects, two distinct plusses. MVCC is south of Oak Park, and is very close to a large natural area with many acres under the auspices of the Cook County Forest Preserves that are quite nice.

With everything that has come along during the past six months or so, I’m finding myself developing a strong desire to clarify my musical direction, especially the overall arc of where I want to go with it. I’ve piled on the projects, hoping that they will start to generate income, and a couple have started to bring in some funds, at least in bits and pieces. It’s definitely not a living as of yet, but it’s a start. However, I do think that I need something more from it all, as well as a good deal more cash coming in from it. I’m coming to the conclusion that I really need a solid direction that is under my control and that excites me. I’m a fairly steady guy; not much really gets me excited. I look forward to things, but in so far as getting a real charge out of pretty much anything, it really doesn’t happen all that often. So this is something that I really need to do something about in the next year. I think that it is truly vital that I do this in the very near future. After all, another year has passed and so has another birthday. It looks like one thing is certain, I’ve done some preparation for tomorrow’s time with my wife and daughter!

It’s under two days until Christmas and the gift shopping was just completed this morning. For us that’s truly squeaking it in; we like to be done at least a week before hand but the past couple of years have been quite last minute. I guess that this is at least in part due to being busy people. My wife works full time in a demanding position at the University of Chicago, and spends close to three hours a day commuting. She gets up super early so she get her mileage in running before work, so she ends up going to bed at the same time as our twelve year old daughter. I’m usually filling my time chasing my three careers (writing, teaching, and music making) around in circles, so it’s not unusual to have a gig, two or three evening rehearsals, a day-time rehearsal and various other aspects eating up time. We are the multi-tasking task force between the two of us, and then my daughter has her after school activities as well. I have more time to simply be than my wife does, but when I do it’s usually at the expense of something I should have been occupied with.

I’m working my way toward adopting an eastern religion, Buddhism, and I’m fairly certain that I’ll end up there, but some things have to change in order for me to get there. One of these is mindfulness. I’m struggling with the Buddhist concept of the mind; it’s not super difficult but it’s also not exactly straightforward, so the mindfulness I’m attempting at this point is being aware of what I’m doing or not doing. This might seem like a simple matter, but I can just about guarantee that most people aren’t fully aware of what they’re doing when they’re doing it. For example, when I practiced scales a long time ago I was painfully aware of what I was trying to do with my fingers, but once I had the pattern locked in it became an automated process, and still is to this day. I think this is how most of us really run scales, by rote and in a programmed sequence. We don’t think about where the whole or half steps are, or even what the key signature is because we’ve linked our entire concentration on one aspect of the process: where our fingers go.

Once we have locked in the physical process and can run up and down at varying speeds, our focus, if we have one, is perfecting our accuracy and increasing our speed. We might reach a point where we figure we have mastered the process, and run these lines up and down with fluidity, but we’ve also, more often than naught, gone onto autopilot, particularly guitarists because for us the patterns are often either the same or a simple variation thereof. Once we have the patterns a key change is just a matter of shifting the pattern to a higher or lower point on the neck, so we don’t really have to think about it. While we think we’ve gained mastery we’ve actually missed a huge part of the train, the actual notes that construct the scale and the actual music that a scale can be. If we are truly mindful, then we are turning our awareness toward the construction of the scale, we are taking the time to be aware of the note names and relationships as we move through them, and we are being aware of our physical state of existence in this moment of the note, where we’re carrying tension, how we’re breathing, our bodies’ relationship with the physical process and the emotional tension and release we are invoking in the entire process. The entire practice of scales becomes exercise of the complete physical process paired with the theoretical relationships and then crowned by the emotional expression of the music itself. Now we are being mindful, as well as growing into a better understanding of what we are doing in those moments.

An aspect of mindfulness that I find very appealing is that it is aimed at being in the moment. This means that your focus is locked into what you are doing, thinking or what ever it is right now and you are giving this moment in your life your full attention. You are being the best you that you can be in that moment and giving your best to that moment. For instance, if I have a performance and I walk out on stage with my guitar, then that is where I need to be mentally, physically and emotionally. Lives are complicated; I know mine is. I spend a good deal of time worrying about things, some of which I have the power to change but most of which I don’t. Most of the things I’m worried about aren’t going to change during the time I’m performing and worrying about them isn’t going to change the outcome either way. The worry is a distraction from actually living. The performance is part of really living and is something I have the power to prepare for and execute. This is where mindfulness comes into play as well, because we are living right now. We can make plans for our futures, and should, but what really makes the difference is what we do in the moment.

Mindfulness is something that doesn’t come easily to me. Part of this is due to my ADD causing a certain amount of mental flitting around. It’s difficult to sit and run scales even without going into the deeper aspects of what I’m actually learning and doing. My brain has a tendency to ricochet and ping pong around even when I am maintaining a guise of being focused which is one of the reasons that I’ve been writing essays for the past two years, to help train myself to maintain a focused train of thought and chase it to a logical conclusion. The essay format helps me enter a somewhat mindful state, as did the five paragraph operations order in the military. Through mindfulness I hope to start finding my path, and to elevate my awareness of who I am through what I do. I hope to become a better person through it, a more focused person, a more empathetic person and a better musician as I work my way along.

Bands are made up of people, and in most cases they tend to be democratic units where everyone has a say in how things are run. Sometimes this is not the case, mostly situations where a leader has hired musicians to fulfill his or her project’s needs. In these cases money is usually involved even to rehearse. However, most bands function outside of the full on pro level and so adopt a majority rules approach. You might have a semi official leader, someone who runs rehearsals, and a division of labor among the group members, but all of this is usually decided by the group as a whole. In order for things to run smoothly, and various jobs to be agreed upon, it is usually necessary to hold periodic meetings, often short ones before or after rehearsals. Sometimes longer meetings are held either in lieu of or in addition to scheduled rehearsals, but these are primarily on an as needed basis. In order for the group to get the most out of its short, or long, scheduled meetings each member must know in advance that the meeting is going to take place, there should be an actual written agenda for the meeting, someone needs to document the proceedings and any decisions made, and everyone must be comfortable with a majority rules decision making process.

Meetings must have a purpose and if they’re going to be conducted successfully should have a plan laid out in the form of an agenda. The agenda should include the topics that need to be discussed and can follow a template decided on by the group. Some things discussed will of course need more time than others, such as new material proposals. One of the benefits of an agenda is that it can be sent to the band members before the meeting so they can think about the topics before hand and come up with ideas. Proposing new material is one of the areas that each member should do some prep work on before the meeting so they are coming to the meeting with a potential list of suggestions in place. This can also include emailing or texting suggestions to whomever is going to run the meeting so he or she can make up a master list for discussion and decision making at the meeting. This kind of pre-meeting planning and preparation can save quite a bit of time for everyone and help to keep things focused.

When the meeting takes place, someone needs to document what has been discussed, what decisions have been made, and then what needs to be carried over to the next meeting either due to running out of time or needing additional time to think about, prep responses to, or do the work required. Without documentation all too often the time ends up being wasted. People will forget what they decided, who said yes to what, what needed to be done before the next meeting/rehearsal, which songs were supposed to be next on the list to work on, and all of the other various aspects that were covered. Whoever takes notes for the meeting should within a reasonable amount of time transcribe what was covered, what decisions were made, and what needs to be addressed on the next agenda, then send it to the other members/make it available. This ensures that people remain on track and that everyone knows what his or her responsibilities are in relation to those decisions.

Bands run best when everyone is satisfied with how things are being decided, and feel like they really have a say in where things are headed and what is being done. It is very important that everyone feels like they have a voice that is heard and taken into consideration. That being said, when a band is run as a democracy everyone needs to be able to handle that when decisions are made, the majority rules. There should be boundaries, of course, and if someone totally despises a piece of music, or finds something intolerable then that MUST be taken into account. While it is a democracy it still needs to be reasonable, otherwise people will leave. If you’ve got a good team player who is being consistently shorted, then you’ll probably end up having conflict, so bear in mind that everyone needs to get his or her way sometimes. Keeping things on equal footing helps immensely.

Bands that are successful are so for many reasons, but one thing they have in common, particularly the ones that are together for extended runs, is that their people work well together for a common goal. This takes effort, even if everyone gets along well. Organization can make a huge difference in being able to maintain that solid relationship as the band moves along, grows and meets with new challenges. A key to creating that organization is open communication and one of the only ways that is going to happen is through dedicated meetings. These meetings must be planned with advance notice, have agendas, and need to have written documentation of what was decided and discussed in order to ensure that everyone is still on the same page the following week, rehearsal or performance. This can and will make a huge difference in both the productivity of the band, and the relationships between the band members.